The Biographical Dictionary of America/Ballou, Hosea (1796–1861)

BALLOU, Hosea, 2d, clergyman, was born at Guilford, Vt., Oct. 18, 1796, son of Asahel and Martha (Starr) Ballou. He was educated at the schools of Halifax, Vt., whither his parents removed about 1797, and later studied under a tutor, Rev. Mr. Wood, but owing to his father's views on religious education, he did not receive a college training. He studied for the Universalist ministry under his grand-uncle, Hosea Ballou, at Portsmouth. N. H., and in 1815 assumed pastoral charge of a church in Stafford, Conn. In 1821 he was appointed pastor of the Universalist church at Roxbury, Mass., and was associated with his grand-uncle and Thomas Starr King in the editorship of the Universalist Magazine, which later became the Trumpet, and of the Universalist Expositor, later known as the Universalist Quarterly, which was founded July 1, 1830, and long exerted a powerful influence in the Universalist denomination. In 1852 he resigned his pastorate at Roxbury, and accepted an invitation to serve the church at Medford, Mass. In 1853 he was elected first president of Tufts college, an institution which he had been largely instrumental in founding, and the early prosperity of which was mainly due to his able administration. In 1843 he succeeded Dr. Channing as overseer of Harvard college. In 1843 Harvard conferred upon him the degree of A. M., and in 1845 that of D. D. His nephew, Hosea Starr Ballou, published his biography in 1896. Mr. Ballou published, "The Ancient History of Universalism from the Time of the Apostolic Fathers to the Reformation" (1829). A second edition of this work was published in 1842. In 1833 he edited and published Sismondi's "History of the Crusades." He died at College Hill, Somerville, Mass., May 27, 1861.